Cars are an almost perfect metaphor for life.

As with many bodies, a car is just a tool; a necessary expense to live one's life... it was when "car culture" took off in the 1960's that people realized they could creatively customize and personalize their prized ride, and as often happens, people with lots of time and resources took customization to fantastic extremes. A lot of those extremes are now mainstream, but at the end of the day; it's still just a "car", and if you treat it poorly and take it for granted, it will eventually go to the same place that all the other cars go, and you will want or need to replace it...

I love cars... it started with the original 1966 Batmobile and a 1967 Mercury Cougar, and continues with a deep respect for the many cool refinements that came from the minds of so many creative people over just a few decades.

It's also awesome to be driven by so much change under a wide open sky, down a long prairie highway, on partial autopilot...

And yeah; I'm definitely aware of what all cars contribute to our climate problem... my distant hope, is for current tech to incrementally improve; not in speed anymore; in efficiency, using power plants that develop and grow from the minds of creative people taking things to fantastic extremes.

Speed is definitely a lot of fun... but it's another fantastic extreme that changes lives in seconds by just kissing a guard rail, or "getting air".

So is there a safer substitute ?; Artificial Intelligence / Gaming can simulate and generate the adreniline + dopamine to mitigate real risk, but again a juxtaposition; that awesome car in your garage is real, and yet at the end of the day, if it sits in the sun too long, it's just a car on 4 wheels, like every other, right ?

When I began the game, just as IRL (in real life), I basically started with nothing - I started at the "free" level where you are quickly awarded a low end "free car" (Dodge Dart) and now had to earn "coins" to get all the customized upgrades it takes to ultimately win a race (to then collect more coins), towards one day achieving enough coins to buy the highly prized, race winning F1 MacLaren. A standard premise; get to the ever higher, next level.

So now substitue the F1 MacLaren with most anything else in one's life, and factor in your age;

You may eventually achieve the F1 MacLaren and then be able to participate in an F1 league, but if you don't also have all the upgrades to your car, then you simply can not go as fast, maneuver as well, or compete equitably; you are instead dependant on the mistakes of others; for the exceptional racers who do have all the upgrades to crash or leave the game, and just as important if not more; that you also manage to drive the whole lap unscathed from your own mistakes and to stay out of harm's way, where no one can deliberately take you out - then you might actually win once in a while; and that adrenaline rush of joy is especially exhilarating.

Intelligent games like this take years to create and are no longer just random "luck"... you really do need a sense of how to drive IRL; to drift corners, to come out of a spin without rolling, etc. plus knowing the course blindfolded (to play without looking at the keys), plus; to know where the shortcuts are (experience). That's a tall order... but people do it - and often to personal extremes.

So then, if you don't master the twitch skill set required to play, you still probably won't win; even with the upgrades... because in these internet connected games; you are racing against real, very talented people and AI bots that connect in at fibre speeds from all over the world, and some of these players are massive beasts - very aggressive and careless drivers; at best they'll let you stay the course and complete the race, so for you then, the strategic use of having all the upgrades is instead to use them to avoid any contact / impact with the other drivers, and that's all assuming you can even get past the Starting Line..

Sounds a lot like real life...

What happened next came over a period of years; I eventually accumulated all my favorite cars, in customized paint colors and patterns, in all the various leagues / levels; I had also upgraded most of them to their maximum speeds and technical specs, and thus was easily awarded increasingly more coins with every"win", until I basically had a free "Jay Leno level" of a virtual car collection with no need for storage or maintenance fees. 🏎️

It bears mentioning to those not in the know; that at any time you can just pay real money / credit to the game developer, to then "skip the line" and get every car and upgrade assigned to your account. All of my daily "wealth accumulation", was "achieved" without paying a single USD cent in "coin upgrades"... and that was part of the overall challenge / fun of it, but of course, as good as it feels to win all the time, it does cost real life time - time that was not spent on doing other things - literally anything else... opportunity costs. hmmm... well yeah 🧐

Another observation was just how close the developers pattern their game to deliberately feel as familiar to "real life" as is possible on a 4K screen, including the "rules" of play / life.

You can drive at the "free" level for years with a slow, incremental incline in accumulating assets of value (upgrades) by earning the currency of the game ("coins") and be rewarded for even just finishing a race, and even more for the occasional win. So does "slow and steady win the race" ?

It can, but while the money option to skip the line saves all that time spent working and saving for it, there is also less gratification. However, if you now use the time to focus and practice high value driving (twitch with skill), then you will rarely lose, if you can actually drive, and you can easily pass the poor guys with only a few upgrades, but now you're basically on autopilot, and that's not as fun after a while... and yet, you continue.

So what to do then ? Well, not much more than accumulate more cars and more upgrades - then there is eventually a game limit on what else you can buy / spend all your ever increasing coins on... at some point you realize that you have (more than) enough and all that is left to get, is just ever more.

Kinda like; IRL.

So as this story goes; one fateful day, I logged into my free account to find the whole digital thing reset to zero. Like arriving to an empty apartment... 😑

Perhaps the game owners had changed their "policy", or maybe their computers had just "glitched" overnight (it happens) - and like many large businesses, there is no one to call, and no way to hold anyone "accountable", and since no currency was exchanged, then nothing is technically owing, but all my time spent collecting the upgrades and my best cars, were now unauthorized. No Way Back.

Just as in real life; hitting the proverbial wall and going to zero, was the only thing that got me to finally get off that ride and do something / anything else, like writing about it here, and appreciating my cool car in real life, as something always more awesome, for me. 😎